Harry Potter and the return of the Junior G-Men

By Weekly Archive On Jul 31, 2007

J.
Edgar Hoover is grinning in his grave.

As
reported by ABC’s Brian Ross, the FBI has adopted a plan to recruit
15,000 covert informants in the United States to help keep America
safe from terrorists, criminals, pickpockets, litterbugs, jaywalkers,
people who cheat on eye exams, and other public menaces.

At
a cost of over $22 million, the FBI will train their new
"confidential human sources" to become the Bureau’s eyes
and ears in every neighborhood. Their job? Reporting to FBI officials
anybody "suspicious" — in other words, anybody with a
different accent, skin color, lifestyle, hair style, religion or —
dare we say it? — sexual orientation.

The
new program, says the FBI, is in direct response to a 2004 directive
by President Bush to develop more "human intelligence
capability." But actually it’s nothing new at all. It’s an
instant replay of J. Edgar Hoover’s famous "Junior G-Men,"
organized by the FBI prior to World War II.

Under
Hoover’s leadership, and inspired by a radio program of the same
name, Junior G-Men clubs sprung up all over America. Like
law-and-order Boy Scouts, boys who belonged to Junior G-Men wore a
special uniform and badge and were deputized to roam the streets
looking for suspicious characters, and report them to real G-Men ("G"
as in government).

More
recently, in the wake of Sept. 11, Attorney General John Ashcroft
tried something similar. He called it "Operation TIPS" — a
domestic spying program in which workers and government employees,
such as TV repairmen and mail carriers, would agree to report any
suspicious activity they observed while doing their jobs. Even though
Ashcroft defended TIPS as a legitimate extension of the war on
terror, he was forced to drop the plan after the U.S. Postal Service
refused to participate, citing problems with the First and Fourth
Amendments — classic examples, said Ashcroft, of tired old pre-9/11
thinking.

So
far, FBI Director Robert Mueller FBI hasn’t come up with a name for
his new program? May I suggest "STASI?" After all, it’s not
being used anymore. And the FBI domestic spy program resembles
nothing so much as the notorious STASI of communist East Germany,
where as many as one out of every 50 citizens signed up as
"unofficial collaborators" to spy on each other.

But
the FBI doesn’t have to go so far back for plans on getting citizens
to rat on fellow citizens. Saddam Hussein, for instance, had a very
effective network of government spies, called the Mukhabarat. Or the
FBI could set up the American equivalent of Saudi Arabia’s religious
police, a few of whom were arrested last week for beating a man to
death after finding a bottle of alcohol in his apartment.

Whatever
they call it, the horde of FBI collaborators is one more assault by
the Bush administration on the right of privacy. Unless Congress
intervenes to stop it, the FBI domestic spying program will join the
Patriot Act, the NSA phone taps and the Pentagon’s secret "TALON"
data base as one more assault on our basic liberties — all justified
under the guise of Bush’s so-called war on terror.

ABC
reports that there may be one consolation. Originally, the FBI
considered putting domestic spies through the same training courses
used by the CIA to recruit spies in foreign countries. According to
Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, it’s a
good thing they dropped that plan: "U.S. intelligence officers
abroad can use bribery, extortion and other patently illegal acts to
corral sources into working for them. You’re not supposed to do that
in the United States." Which, of course, doesn’t mean they
won’t.

What’s
even more disturbing than the idea that the FBI would set up a huge
domestic spying program is the fact that most Americans will probably
accept this latest manifestation of the price we have to pay for
fighting terror. In fact, the opposite is true. Every time we give up
one inch of freedom, the terrorists win.

Don’t
you feel safer knowing the FBI will soon have a plan in place to spy
more effectively on the ACLU, PETA, Quakers, Moveon.org and other
suspicious characters?

As
for our civil liberties? Don’t worry about it. We weren’t using them
anyway.

Bill
Press is host of a nationally syndicated radio show and author of a
new book, "How
the Republicans Stole Religion."
His email address is: bill@billpress.com. His Web site is:
www.billpress.com.